At her summer job at Bottomrock Lake, Teddy meets the new lifeguard, Toby – the last person to see her twin sister, Izzy, alive before she disappeared the year before. Izzy’s body has never been found and her passport has disappeared. Teddy has a lot of questions about what happened that night. How could an aspiring Olympic swimmer disappear during a lake swim? Could Toby be lying about what happened that night? Teddy is determined to find out. Toby is the only one who can help her unravel the truth.
Written solely from Teddy’s point of view we journey through her grief and confusion as she realises her twin hasn’t shared some of the most important parts of her life with her. Guilt and anger give way to doubt and acceptance. Teddy sometimes speaks to Izzy, addressing her in the first person, which feels both intimate and jarring in patches. The pacing suffers slightly from being slow at the start to switching to a gallop in the last third of the book.
While this is a mystery story, it is also a story of grief and self discovery. Teddy, her parents and friends are all trying to rebuild their lives, their relationships and themselves. Neeves handles the topics of loss, mental health and death sensitively and subtly. The characters are well rounded and keep the reader interested. After You Vanished is a satisfying, quiet mystery about grief and navigating through it.
Patricia Hayes
After You Vanished
E.A. Neeves
Hyperion, 2023
Hardback, £16.99
ISBN 9781368092708
